5 months ago
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The Union Labour and Employment Ministry has clarified that contributions by employers and employees to the Provident Fund successful excess of the statutory monthly wage ceiling of ₹15,000 are voluntary, aft the Code connected Social Security and 3 different Codes came into unit connected November 21.
The Code connected Social Security replaces the Employees’ Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 and 8 different laws. Similarly, 20 abstracted laws are subsumed into the different 3 Codes - Code connected Wages; Industrial Relations Code and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code.
In a station connected societal media level X connected Wednesday, the Ministry made it wide that “there is nary ineligible requirement” for the contributions made implicit and supra the wage ceiling. “In lawsuit the leader and the worker agree, they tin voluntarily lend connected wages much than the statutory bounds of ₹15,000.” It gave this explanation, portion emphasising that determination would beryllium nary simplification in take-home wage successful the airy of enforcement of the 4 Codes. Also, the Ministry gave an illustration to substantiate its position.
Since September 2014, the contiguous bounds has been successful force. It was against this backdrop that aboriginal this month, Kerala MPs Benny Behanan and Dean Kuriakose raised a question successful the Lok Sabha whether the ceiling would beryllium accrued to ₹30,000. The Union Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya replied that “raising the wage ceiling for sum nether EPFO [Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation] is done based connected extended stakeholders’ consultations, including commercialized unions and manufacture associations, arsenic the aforesaid volition person interaction connected the take-home wage of employees and connected the hiring outgo for employers.”
Meanwhile, a fewer days ago, 5 organisations representing members of the Employees’ Pension Scheme (EPS) of the EPFO met successful New Delhi and emphasised the request for revising the pension amounts, particularly for those receiving little than ₹1,000. This was contempt the Union government’s August 2014 determination to provide a minimum pension of ₹ 1,000 per period for subordinate / widow(er) / disabled/ nominee/ babelike genitor pensioners; ₹750 per period for orphan pensioners and ₹250 per period for children pensioners.
According to the Annual Report of the EPFO, 2023-24, determination were 36.6 lakh pensioners who were getting a pension that was little than oregon equivalent up to ₹ 1,000. In a practice sent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi precocious past month, the Employees’ Pension (1995) Coordination Committee stressed the request for bringing each eligible PF pensioners nether the fold of higher pension based connected wages, as, the sheet contended, the EPFO had failed to instrumentality it since 2004.
